


things fall apart

by amazonqueen



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Break Up, Break Up Talk, Established Relationship, Graduation, Hong Jisoo | Joshua & Yoon Jeonghan Are Best Friends, Long Live Feedback Comment Project, M/M, Meaningful FlashbacksTM, the author is not very proud, there's a lot of teenage self-hate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:53:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,790
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22485895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amazonqueen/pseuds/amazonqueen
Summary: It had been a bit of a minor tragedy, really.(They were so damn good together, but in the end, the result was still the same as if they were terrible; just delayed.)The end had been like love in reverse; where before they’d fallen together, they fell apart instead. The day he finally did it, all Jeonghan could remember besides his blinding headache was the thoughtso this is how it ends.orjeonghan and seungcheol are high school sweethearts at the end of the line.
Relationships: Choi Seungcheol | S.Coups/Yoon Jeonghan, Hong Jisoo | Joshua & Yoon Jeonghan
Comments: 11
Kudos: 33





	things fall apart

**Author's Note:**

  * For [christinaytzhangroxs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/christinaytzhangroxs/gifts).



> happy birthday chris <3

**Jeonghan:** i think...i don’t have a boyfriend anymore

(read 11:30 am)

In retrospect, it had probably been inevitable, as most things in the past tended to be. But that had been hard to see at the time. Maybe it was the haze of teenage hormones, the breathtaking cold of that winter, or the immense stress they had been under. Whatever it was, the final three months of Jeonghan and Seungcheol’s doomed two-year relationship still followed Jeonghan around like an earworm from his childhood he couldn’t shake; nostalgic, rooted in the time it was from and the person you had been when you listened to it, and bittersweet for knowing you could never go back.

Seungcheol hadn’t quite been his first, but Jeonghan liked to think of him that way, if only because Seungcheol was the first person he’d ever dated seriously. In middle school, he’d once gone through three girlfriends in two weeks. Seungcheol wasn’t like that. From grade ten, Jeonghan and Seungcheol had been dating on and off, stabilizing by grade eleven and sailing all the way through to grade twelve before (spoiler alert) falling apart near the end.

It had been a bit of a minor tragedy, really.

(They were so damn good together, but in the end, the result was still the same as if they were terrible; just delayed.)

The end had been like love in reverse; where before they’d fallen together, they fell apart instead. The day he finally did it, all Jeonghan could remember besides his blinding headache was the thought _so this is how it ends._

* * *

January of his grade twelve year. Jeonghan had just come off a summer in which a homemade dye job left him with blond hair to rival any Kpop star. A little over six months later, the blond had faded to mostly the tips of his hair, along with the certainty he’d once had about him and Seungcheol.

It was easy to say you loved someone when you were young, easier still to love them back. When you’re fifteen, after all, and somebody tells you they love you, you’re gonna believe them. But by this point, they were two years past fifteen. They weren’t in grade ten anymore, small and wide-eyed and desperately in love.

They were Jeonghan and Seungcheol, seventeen and sick of it all, sitting up on the balcony of the school cafetorium, eating their lunches and wondering when the silence had become oppressive instead of familiar.

“Did you finish your physics lab?” Seungcheol offered, quiet.

Jeonghan forced a laugh. “No,” he admitted. “I didn’t. I don’t know what else you expected from me.”

Far, far down below them, little clumps of their fellow students swirled around the microwave, the cafeteria line, the edge of the stage, the most coveted cafeteria table. Jeonghan watched them instead of his boyfriend and ate his lunch. The clanging of the metal spoon against the insides of his thermos almost seemed like his thoughts trapped inside his head; ringing, empty, and trapped.

There was something incredibly, stiflingly lonely about this. The people down below. The boy by his side that might as well have been down there. The white noise of students gossiping, removed from him by distance. The familiar heat of his thermos.

He was sitting next to Seungcheol, but Jeonghan felt wholly alone. Before, it had never been like this; Jeonghan and Seungcheol were a dynamic duo, laughing and pushing each other around, jumping on each other’s backs and making out in the music room, Jeonghan pressed up against a piano that people would soon learn to avoid.

Before, there would never be a moment like this. Silence, sure, but not heavy or smothering, just comfortable. Before whatever had happened to them, age or exhaustion or lack of love, Jeonghan and Seungcheol would be in the same situation, sitting up on the balcony, swinging their legs off the side or putting their feet up on top of each other, and they’d be chattering about teachers, about homework, about the best flavours of ice cream or the optimal amount of ice in bubble tea, the latest couple that had gotten together or some club’s internal power struggle.

Now, even though the topics still existed, he found that he lacked the will or the energy to engage with them. The once unceasing stream of words had stopped. Now it seemed that every time something came to his mouth, he thought better of it and kept quiet, leaving the sentiment or observation to rattle around behind his teeth.

After all, how inane was a debate about mint chocolate chip versus cookies and cream? How dry was discussing internecine debate team squabbles or nepotism in the musical cast list?

Was it that Jeonghan had stopped caring? And if he had, what was it he had stopped caring about?

(School? Petty teenage dramas that didn’t matter? Seungcheol? Or all three?)

“I don’t know what I expected of you either,” Seungcheol said, quiet. For a moment, Jeonghan looked at the other boy, confused. It took him three awkward breaths to remember where the conversation had left off.

Seungcheol’s response should’ve sounded like banter, teasing and light. Instead, it felt laden with subtext, and Jeonghan kind of hated it.

(That was so high school, wasn’t it? To want it straight, to want people’s emotions to be clearly communicated while doing the same thing you hated and hiding beef behind innuendos and allusions.)

“You should have known,” Jeonghan said. He tried his best not to sound accusatory. He wasn’t sure how he fared on that front.

“I really should have,” Seungcheol said, and now the forced laugh exited his throat, terribly fake. Jeonghan had always been better than Seungcheol at faking it; not that he had ever needed to, before. But Seungcheol’s face was an open book, and the other boy had never been all that good at dishonesty. Or maybe Jeonghan was just too good at seeing Seungcheol’s truth.

“You do know it’s due tomorrow, right?” Seungcheol asked as Jeonghan fished around inside his thermos for the last bits of his lunch.

“Mmhm,” Jeonghan mumbled through his food. “That doesn’t really change anything for me,” he said after he swallowed. “Either I do it tonight or at lunch tomorrow, same time as I do all my other work.”

“Sometimes,” Seungcheol said, looking at Jeonghan like he was studying an alien, “I really don’t know how you made it this far without failing.”

“Hey, when you figure it out,” Jeonghan laughed, “tell me. I’d like to know.”

And this was it, wasn’t it? This was almost what Jeonghan wanted. It was banter, of a sort. So what if it was off? This was a shadow of what Jeongcheol was supposed to be, but it was still Jeongcheol.

(But it still broke his heart a little to see Seungcheol look at him like Jeonghan was a mystery. Even if Jeonghan increasingly felt more and more like the two of them were mysteries to each other.)

“I’m not good at figuring things out,” Seungcheol said, a little smile playing on his mouth. Somehow, it looked sad.

“That makes two of us.”

Jeonghan clicked open his water bottle and inhaled a large gulp. Maybe if he drank enough, he could push the sadness in his throat back down to his stomach.

* * *

“Jeonghan,” Joshua said as he worked methodically down a page of math questions, “are you okay?”

“Yup,” he replied without thinking, despite how much of a lie it was. How was he supposed to be okay, when his relationship was breaking down in pieces, when he was standing inside a house of cards as it collapsed? Was this what his parents had meant when they said not to date in high school lest he get distracted from his schoolwork? Jeonghan thought maybe he understood now. He could only be glad he’d done something early for once and finished his university applications back in December, because he had no clue how he’d muster up the energy to do them now.

University. He and Seungcheol had agreed to apply to the same ones, in the hopes that they’d get into the same place and be able to carry through to university without having to figure out the whole long-distance thing.

Now Jeonghan kind of wished they didn’t get in at the same places at all, just so that he’d have an easy excuse to break up, blasphemous as that thought was.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he continued. Joshua was on the fifth question already. Jeonghan had just started the first, and by started, he meant copied down the equation.

“I don’t know,” Joshua shrugged. “Just a feeling. You’ve been pretty quiet.”

“Contrary to popular belief, I am capable of shutting up occasionally.”

“I know,” Joshua said, looking up to make eye contact. His friend looked endearingly serious. “But it’s usually not a sign that everything is fine in Jeonghan Land.”

“It’s fine,” Jeonghan said, unconvincing. “Don’t worry about it.”

“You’ve never said that and actually been fine, just so you know.”

“Mmhm, I’m aware,” Jeonghan replied. “That doesn’t change anything.”

“Alright,” Joshua shrugged. “But you should at least talk to someone about whatever it is. What about Seungcheol?”

Jeonghan’s blood ran cold.

“Yeah,” he said, tasting the lie on his tongue, “I will. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“You always say that,” Joshua said, looking very worried despite Jeonghan’s explicit instructions. “I’m not sure I’ve ever believed it.”

Jeonghan put down his pencil and turned to make direct eye contact with Joshua. “What do you want to hear from me, Joshua? I’m depressed, I have anxiety, I’m stressed, I want to kill myself? What kind of problem do you want me to confirm? Because you clearly have a pre-existing hypothesis and if the only way for you to stop is for me to play into your theory then I’ll do it.”

“Whoa,” Joshua said, disconcerted. “Calm down. I just worry about you, is all. You’ve never exactly been big on sharing. It feels like you’re never going to say anything until it’s too big to deal with.”

“That’s literally when people share, Joshua,” Jeonghan replied. “They talk about their problems because they can’t deal with them on their own.”

“I don’t know if this is news to you, but it would be a lot easier to deal with them if you asked for help from people around you. It doesn’t have to be me. It could be Seungcheol.”

“Got it,” Jeonghan replied. “Now will you please let me do my math?”

Joshua stared at him for a long moment. “Fine,” he relented. “Do your math.”

“Thank you.”

* * *

Two weeks later.

 **Jeonghan:** Joshua I think we have an issue

 **Joshua:** we?

 **Jeonghan:** yes bc i’m telling u about it therefore ur in it with me 

**Jeonghan:** idk how i feel about seungcheol anymore

 **Joshua:** answer my facetime

Jeonghan watched himself accept the call as if he were floating somewhere just outside the back of his head, the thumb that moved both his own and not his own, foreign and yet wholly familiar. Maybe he was in shock. Maybe this was what it was like, to muddle through your high school life and then abruptly wake up and realize, _oh fuck._ _I've been stuck in a mistake for the past two years._

No. That was too strong, and it wasn't fair to Seungcheol. It wasn't that they were a mistake, more like they had overstayed their welcome. They were actors on a stage who didn't know how the play ended, sticking around on stage like blind fools, improvising their parts even as they knew the roof was going to fall in on their heads.

And that was how it was, wasn't it? Things fell apart, the way they fell together. What could a mere mortal like Jeonghan do, when confronted with the vast blueprint of the universe, other than get on his knees and say thank you? Other than bare his neck and accept the knife? He was the servant in the historical drama. He had no control over where this story went, he just followed its current.

"Jeonghan," Joshua said as the call connected. "What's going on?"

To Joshua's everlasting credit, he didn't gloat. He could have. Jeonghan might have, if he were in the same position, although he liked to think he wouldn't be gleeful about the implosion of his best friend's two-year relationship. But he genuinely might have, and Joshua would never even think about it. Joshua was good like that, in a sincere, earnest way that Jeonghan would probably make a New Year's Resolution to emulate and then give up on within the hour. Joshua was right, wholeheartedly so, and he would barely even let the smallest sliver of a satisfied smile show itself on his face.

"Seungcheol and I," Jeonghan said. "I don't know how long we're going to last."

"What makes you say that?"

He sighed. "We're just going through the motions, Joshua. Can't you tell?"

"Honestly?"

"Always."

"Not really," Joshua replied. "Maybe I'm just not observant enough."

"Or I'm a good actor," Jeonghan shrugged, sliding down his bed so that he was now holding his phone above his head. It was ripe for disaster, but then again, he seemed to be in the middle of disasters all the time these days.

"I wish you didn't have to be," Joshua said, and the look on his face was just tragic.

A laugh. "Wish I was straight like you?"

Joshua was no longer fazed by the way Jeonghan talked. A lesser boy, one who hadn't been friends with Jeonghan forever, would have been startled, maybe shocked, definitely flustered. That lesser boy might have stammered and said that wasn't what he meant, he was totally fine with Jeonghan being gay, blah blah blah.

Guilt. What a kicker, huh? Made people do things they wouldn't have otherwise.

(Like stay in a relationship that was long-dead, maybe. Just as an example.)

But Joshua wasn't like that. He just rolled his eyes and said, "No, this way you can't be competition."

"Scared you'll lose?"

"I know I will. The entire school knows you're gay and at least three freshmen girls fall in love with you every year like clockwork."

Jeonghan laughed despite himself. "Good for a guy's ego, isn't it?"

"I don't know, I'll get back to you on that once I too develop a cult of freshman girls," Joshua deadpanned. "Now, tell the therapist about your problems."

This was the thing Jeonghan wasn't sure he'd ever understand about Joshua. Joshua was so Western in that way, although they all were, being raised in the States. He was just so open about his feelings. About who he was, although that was definitely a lot easier when you weren't queer like Jeonghan or Seungcheol. Joshua was so unapologetic for existing. Jeonghan didn't know how he did it.

How did a person exist on this planet, in this country, in this city, surrounded by utter privilege and excess, without feeling guilty? The arrogance of it all. The futility. Imagine thinking that the world owed you anything. Jeonghan couldn't relate. He hadn't done a single thing to deserve to exist, here or anywhere else. And maybe it was part of That Gay Thing again, where Jeonghan always felt like he needed to justify himself and who he was, but he genuinely didn't understand how to live without feeling just a little bit sorry for pursuing his own happiness. For eating an avocado that was probably picked by mistreated migrant workers, or driving a car when the planet was on fire, or for kissing boys behind the bleachers. For existing, basically. For wanting things, for asking other people to give you love or attention or companionship.

One day, Jeonghan was going to die, and whatever had made him, God or the universe or the vagaries of evolution, was going to ask him to justify the space he had taken up, the resources he'd used, the time he'd had. And he wasn't sure he'd ever know how to answer.

"I don't know how to do that," he murmured. "If I don't even understand them, how can I explain them to you?"

"You don't have to explain yourself to me," Joshua shrugged. "You just have to tell me what's been going on. There doesn't need to be any soul-searching or psychoanalyzing, I'll do that part for you."

Jeonghan sighed. "I guess," he began, "I don't know how to talk to Seungcheol anymore."

Joshua looked blankly at him. "You move your mouth and words come out, Jeonghan."

"You know what I mean."

"I do. So you guys make small talk and you can't ever get to actual conversation?"

"Kind of. I feel like we're talking but the words just go right by each other, you know? I might as well be talking to a moderately competent AI instead of my boyfriend. It's like, are you ready for the physics test, did you hear about the due date for the chem lab got pushed back, can you read my English essay for me, I hate verb conjugation in French, and that's it."

"Isn't that how high school students talk to each other?"

Jeonghan sighed. "Yeah, if you're casual friends in math class that don't talk to each other as soon as you leave the classroom. Not if you're boyfriends. Not if you're close."

"Don't we talk about that shit?"

"But that's not all we talk about! I send you dumbass memes and news articles and you send me political commentary in return. We talk about the best flavour of potato chips and what we want to do with our lives. Seungcheol and I don't do that anymore."

It was kind of tragic, when he said it out loud. If he went looking, he could find those conversations he was talking about. He could find Seungcheol messaging him at midnight while on vacation, telling him how pretty the stars were. He could find conversations about parenting and having kids and giving up ambitions for the sake of stability and social acceptance. He could find exchanges with meaning, records of 5 hour calls, stupid selfies and gifs and pickup lines.

Jeonghan wondered how far back he'd have to scroll. Was it more sad if it the answer was a lot or a little?

Joshua shrugged. "I guess it depends on how long it's been. If it's only been a little while maybe he's just busy. Or stressed. Or something else is going on with him. It doesn't mean your relationship is broken."

"Uh, it kind of does," Jeonghan responded. "Because if it weren't, he would have told me by now."

Joshua was silent for a long while. "Do you have to tell each other everything to be in a healthy relationship?"

"Not everything," Jeonghan said, focusing on Joshua's model T-rex on the bookshelf in his room so he wouldn't have to look at his friend's face. There was a dull, aching pain in his chest, the kind of pain you felt the day after running. The pain that told you you'd used your muscles too much, hadn't warmed up properly, needed to take care of yourself.

His heart was sore.

"Just the things that matter," he continued.

"So maybe if he hasn't mentioned it it doesn't matter."

Jeonghan sighed. "Or maybe I don't."

* * *

A study date, or something like that. Jeonghan was sitting with Seungcheol in the school library, side by side at a big table. He wanted food or coffee or _something_ for his stomach, something to quell the emptiness, but the scary librarian was on duty today and he wasn't about to risk getting his head cut off by a little old lady that was five feet tall max.

Seungcheol had stacked two thick textbooks on the table between the two of them, physics on top of chemistry. From where Jeonghan was sitting, he couldn't even see the top of Seungcheol's head, hunched over as he was.

Jeonghan had his earbuds in and he'd made the incredibly bad decision of hitting the first Spotify playlist he saw. It turned out to be his Richard Siken-inspired, melancholy sadboi hours playlist, meant for lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling at 4am. It was obviously not the right choice for studying in the library.

He knew on an abstract level that this was stupid. He knew that he was supposed to be studying thermal physics and calculating things about ice melting, not staring down at his paper as he listened to the lyrics of his sad songs.

How small he was. How alone. To be here, with nothing but his work, while the entire world out there lived its life. People were passing by the windows and laughing and chatting about god-knew-what, and he was here. Doing physics, or rather, pretending to do physics while thinking himself into a mental breakdown.

Unbidden, the memory of his and Seungcheol's long talks at night rose to the forefront of his mind. How he'd hide in his room with the lights turned off and his earbuds in, keeping his voice down as they FaceTimed until two in the morning. How he'd nearly fall asleep and Seungcheol would laugh and then tell him to go rest. How he'd protest, saying he was fine, he could talk more.

What did they talk about? It seemed so far away now.

_"Do you think you could live like that?" Seungcheol wondered out loud._

_"Like what?"_

_"Like that teacher. Alone."_

_"She's not alone," Jeonghan protested, "she just isn't married."_

_"And she's not dating anyone," Seungcheol pointed out. "She's an adult without a romantic relationship, living by herself. She's utterly alone in the world."_

_"I'm sure she has friends and family," Jeonghan deadpanned. "You don't need to be in a relationship to be not-alone. That's how people end up marrying someone they hate."_

_"Settling because they're terrified of being lonely?"_

_"Yeah. Because they're too scared to be alone. What's there to be scared of?"_

_"Not everyone can look in the mirror and live with who they are, Jeonghan."_

_"Marriage doesn't fix that. If I settled and married like that I'd probably hate my mirror self even more. I already can't live with who I am."_

_"I think I'd rather hate myself and not be alone."_

_"Seungcheol," Jeonghan said, "we've been alone our whole lives. Aren't you used to it by now?"_

_Seungcheol blinked at him. "I'm not alone, though. I have you, don't I?"_

_His breath caught in his throat. "Yeah."_

_"Cheers to hating ourselves with company," Seungcheol laughed._

It was laughable, now. It had been a joke, back then. Hating themselves with company; it was too accurate. He doubted Seungcheol had ever thought, at the time, that they would end up here. That Jeonghan would be hating himself not just with Seungcheol but because of him.

_Three missed calls from Seungcheol. Five increasingly insistent "are you ok" texts. And all because of one spam post from Jeonghan, captioned "i've come to the realization that i am fucked up"._

_Seungcheol texted again. He said he would keep pestering Jeonghan until he picked up._

_The next time Seungcheol called, Jeonghan pressed the green button instead of the red._

_"What's wrong?" Seungcheol asked._

_"Doesn't matter," Jeonghan said dully. "Are you okay?"_

_"No, it matters to me."_

_He paused. "Why?"_

_"Because you're a human that I care about."_

_"I," Jeonghan started, then stopped. He tried again. "I really don't think I should be that important."_

_"Bullshit. You are to me. You're never not going to be important, do you hear me?"_

Jeonghan leaned back in his chair and looked over at Seungcheol, earbuds in and dutifully working away. But when he looked at Seungcheol, all he saw was the boy that had called him while he was in the depths of self-hatred, the boy who had said things like 'you matter' and 'I care about you' in the moments when he thought he was the least worthy. There was the boy who had talked with him about ambitions and angst, given him pre-test pep talks and had heart attacks with him waiting for the marks to come out. Except it wasn't that boy, because that Seungcheol had disappeared some time ago along with Jeonghan's belief in anything that could be called _them._

He wanted to cry. He could feel it in his throat, congealing into a giant ball of sadness that he was going to have trouble keeping down.

He had never thought he'd be the kind of person to break down in the library. He hoped he didn't start becoming one.

His heart felt like it was being cut in two. To see something so clearly and to know that it was gone, unattainable, lost to the mists of time; to know that you had had it and would never have it again was torture.

Jeonghan could see the Seungcheol he had first fallen for so clearly, which made it so much worse that he couldn't see him anymore. He wondered if Seungcheol looked desperately for that better version of Jeonghan in his face, and whether he too failed to find what he was looking for.

He was going to cry.

Seungcheol looked up and took out an earbud. "Jeonghan?" he asked, voice low. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," he said. "Don't even worry about it."

And Seungcheol believed it, and he went back to his work, and Jeonghan choked on the tragedy of it all, because he didn't know how to do anything else.

* * *

Lunch on the balcony in the cafetorium, as usual. Jeonghan and Seungcheol and the awkward silence, the third partner in the relationship that was probably closer to Jeonghan and Seungcheol individually than they were to each other.

"I miss you," Seungcheol said, careful. His words were so cautious, so measured, like he had practised them in his head a thousand times before he said them. Jeonghan's heart was breaking in slow motion, or maybe it was falling apart just like they were.

The last time Seungcheol had been this careful with him was years ago.

"I'm right here," Jeonghan tried to laugh. "Are you high?"

"This isn't here," and Seungcheol tapped on Jeonghan's head with his knuckles, the kind of affectionate physicality that Jeonghan had endured from his mother as a child while playing piano. "You're the one that's high. Your brain is floating somewhere up there," and Seungcheol gestured towards the high, sloping ceiling.

"Stop talking like I'm dead," Jeonghan grumbled. "My brain and body are right here next to you, dumbass."

Seungcheol wasn't prone to Luna Lovegood speak, and Jeonghan didn't like that he was doing it now. It made him feel worse and worse, being around this boy; a boy that cared, that was kind and generous and studious, someone who had been with him for so long that he wasn't sure which parts of his high school persona had developed independently of him.

He had said to Joshua that maybe he didn't matter to Seungcheol but he did, he knew he did, how could he not—when Seungcheol was the one who had said something, albeit innocuously, when Seungcheol was looking at him like that?

It was Jeonghan's fault. He had broken them somehow. People were supposed to grow out of high school relationships but he wasn't supposed to grow out of Seungcheol.

"Okay, okay," Seungcheol said, trying to laugh, and Jeonghan said trying because he knew Seungcheol inside out (or he used to) and while the other boy could fool anyone else into thinking he was being genuine Jeonghan wasn't about to fall for it.

He wondered if Seungcheol could tell when Jeonghan was faking it. Would he rather Seungcheol knew or that he didn't?

Did he want to be known or did he want to be a mystery? Did he want to believe that Seungcheol could see through his painstakingly crafted walls or did he want to luxuriate in the privacy of one's own thoughts?

Did he want the feeling of knowing that someone else capital-K Knew you and all the trust that that required, or did he want to be safely tucked inside his mind and away from the agony of letting someone else poke through your heart?

Maybe he just didn't know what he fucking wanted, and that was what the problem was to begin with.

"I miss being in grade ten," Jeonghan mused out loud. "Or even eleven. Everything is coming at us too fast. This time next year, we're going to be legal adults."

"Finally," Seungcheol said. "Why go back?"

"Don't you miss it?"

"Miss what? The smaller workload, sure, but back then we couldn't drive, we couldn't go anywhere without permission, we couldn't do shit. I'd rather do more work now in exchange for the control of my own life."

"You'll never have control of your life as long as you live at home," Jeonghan shrugged. "And what's the point in having all those freedoms if you have too much work to enjoy them? I'd rather be a little fifteen-year-old kid hanging out at the bubble tea place after school, even if I can't drive."

Seungcheol looked at him more directly than Jeonghan felt like he'd been looked at in a long time. He felt seen, and he kind of hated it.

"I think," Seungcheol said, "the difference between you and me is you want to go back, and I want to go forward."

"Is it so wrong of me to want known happiness?"

"But what if there's greater happiness in the future?"

Jeonghan threw up his hands. "And what if there isn't?"

The words hung in the air, and then Seungcheol shrugged. "And what if there isn't," he echoed.

( _I don't think there is. Not for us_ , but Jeonghan could never say that out loud.)

* * *

There was a grade 10 kid named Mingyu that Jeonghan had sort of taken under his wing after they met on the bus, and he was obsessed with cars. He had car posters in his room, could identify every car they passed on the road (this in comparison to Jeonghan, who could only identify the make of a car when it was written out for him like a Ford), and his personal email even had a car name in it.

Jeonghan and Seungcheol were talking to Mingyu before classes one day when the other boy flipped his phone over and Seungcheol caught a glimpse of his background.

"Is that a car?"

"Yeah of course," Mingyu said blithely. "It's my favourite."

"I don't really know anything about fancy cars," Seungcheol admitted. "What is it?"

"It's an Audi S7," Mingyu grinned.

"That's the one with the fake Olympic rings," Jeonghan commented in Seungcheol's ear.

"They're not Olympic rings, Jeonghan," Mingyu corrected. "They're just very similar. Did you know Audi got sued by the Olympics over the logo?"

"Fake Olympic rings," Jeonghan shrugged.

"How long have you loved that car for?" Seungcheol asked.

"5 years," he said.

"God," Seungcheol said, turning to Jeonghan. "Imagine loving one thing for that long."

Jeonghan felt something cold slide down his back. "Yeah," he repeated. "Imagine."

They made eye contact and Jeonghan felt it and he knew Seungcheol felt it too. It was one long, drawn-out moment and then Mingyu, oblivious as ever, said, "You'll love me for that long, right, Jeonghan?"

And then it was over and Jeonghan was laughing and Seungcheol was pretending to be mad at Mingyu.

"Of course I will," he said, patting the kid on the head. "Who needs this one anyway?"

* * *

"If he doesn't make you happy, break up with him," Joshua said, eating popcorn at the kitchen table.

"Joshua, it's not that simple," Jeonghan protested, stealing a piece of popcorn back for himself.

"How? He either sparks joy or doesn't spark joy."

"Seungcheol isn't an item of clothing for you to Marie Kondo," Jeonghan reprimanded.

Joshua looked less than an inch away from rolling his eyes. "You get the point. Why stay in a relationship that's making you unhappy?"

"It's not binary like that. It's not happy or unhappy. It's complicated, Joshua. I can be both at once."

"Oh yeah? How does he make you happy?"

Jeonghan shrugged helplessly. "He cares about me. Do you know how hard that is to find?"

Joshua just sort of looked at him for a long, long moment. "No, I don't," he finally said. "Because I don't think it's hard to find someone that cares about you. Fuck, Jeonghan, _I_ care about you. Why would you do that to yourself?"

Jeonghan didn't say anything. He ate a handful of popcorn instead. Joshua waited. Damn him for knowing that Jeonghan would break eventually.

"I don't know," he finally said. "What if this is it, you know? What if I never find a guy like him again?"

"You're seventeen, Jeonghan," Joshua deadpanned. "Never is a long, long time. I think you'll be fine. There is a world after high school."

"Still," Jeonghan sighed. "He cares. He always has. You know, we were studying in the library the other day and I looked at him and all I could think of was how he we used to stay up late calling each other. He's always stuck by me. I almost cried, Joshua. In the fucking library."

Joshua had that look on his face. It was one Jeonghan was familiar with, one he had seen on his best friend and his parents many times. It was the look of preparation; Joshua was disappointed in him, and he was getting ready to give capital-A Advice.

"I think, Jeonghan," Joshua began, and Jeonghan cut in, desperate to make this a joke rather than an even more emotional conversation.

"Oh, you can think? I didn't know that."

"Haha,"Joshua replied, unamused. "Anyway. I think, Jeonghan, that if you look at someone and can see only the past and not the present, that's not someone you can have a healthy relationship with."

"And why is that," he asked flatly.

"You only see who they were, not who they are."

"What's so bad about that?"

"Because," Joshua laughed, as if it was eminently obvious. "You're playing yourself."

"Ah," Jeonghan said, cynical, "my only talent."

"Don't say that," and now Joshua looked sad again. Like he didn't know how to deal with a Jeonghan that was like this, self-deprecating and difficult. But this was just how Jeonghan was, this was how he had been born or maybe he had fucked himself over the edge of insanity and into being like this, and Joshua could only live with it as he always had.

No matter how much Joshua wanted that from him, Jeonghan couldn't be malleable. He wasn't a project for Joshua to mould and shape. He couldn't just be whatever people wanted from him. If he had that power within him he would be a different, and probably happier, person.

"You telling me not to say it won't stop me from thinking it, Joshua," Jeonghan said. "I've always been like this, you know that. It doesn't change."

"I know," Joshua said, quieter. "I just wish it would."

"What if Jeongcheol is another one of those things that doesn't change? Or at least it's not supposed to."

"Sometimes," Joshua sighed, "you stay with someone because you love them. Sometimes, you stay because you think you're supposed to. You're the second category."

"No, you got it all wrong," Jeonghan laughed, "if I was doing what I was supposed to do I wouldn't have dated him to begin with."

"But now that you're here, you think the universe wants you to stick with it."

"Honestly? I don't think I matter enough to the universe for it to care."

"Stop the self-deprecating deflection and deal with the issue at hand."

"But that's my emotional support self-deprecating deflection," Jeonghan pouted.

"Nice try," Joshua said. "Do you really think you should stay with him because you feel like you're supposed to?"

"I don't know," Jeonghan said. "I don't know what I think. I just know that that boy has been tangled in my life so long I can't see myself at this school without him."

"I think you're going to have to," Joshua shrugged. "Do you even know who you are without Seungcheol attached to your name?"

Jeonghan blinked. "Not a version of myself I usually enjoy," he responded.

"Maybe you should work on that. Without him."

"That scares me."

"Not to be a white mom's motivational throw pillow, but maybe this time doing what scares you is the right thing to do."

Jeonghan sort of knew it was, somewhere under his heart and behind his liver. Maybe that was a sign, that it was behind his liver. Livers filtered out toxins. Maybe his was trying to tell him that Seungcheol was a toxin he needed to filter out of his life.

"Okay but what if it isn't?" he asked.

Joshua looked right at him. "Jeonghan," he said, "we both know it is."

* * *

The first weekend of March break. Jeonghan was sitting cross-legged on his bed and staring at his phone, wondering if he was really going to go through with it.

Was he actually going to break up with Seungcheol? How do you say that to someone? How do you look them in the eye and ignore your guilt and say, _you're important to me, you have been important to me, but I'm letting you go._

 **Joshua:** tell me when you actually do it 

**Joshua:** i know you said you were gonna do it today but i know you 

**Joshua:** it's okay if you pussy out today as long as you do it eventually 

**Joshua:** preferably sooner rather than later

 **Jeonghan:** well now i have to do it today just to prove you wrong

 **Joshua:** i know :)

Jeonghan hit Seungcheol's name in his phone before he could think himself out of it.

"Jeonghan?" Seungcheol said.

"Seungcheol," he replied. "Hi."

"What's up?"

If he didn't start in on the actual reason he was calling he knew he never would. He'd let himself get tangled up in small talk and awkward silence and they'd be right back to where they were before and Jeonghan wasn't going to let himself fuck up today.

"Um, I wanted to talk."

"Cool. Talk away."

"About us," Jeonghan said, cautious.

When the shift clicked in Seungcheol's brain, Jeonghan saw it in the other boy's eyes. "Oh," Seungcheol said. "Okay."

He took a deep breath and plunged in.

"I think we should break up."

(The water was much, much colder than he had expected.)

Seungcheol didn't look surprised. Seungcheol didn't look much of anything at all, and Jeonghan abruptly realized that he had only ever been able to read this boy because Seungcheol had wanted him to. And now he couldn't, because Seungcheol didn't want him to.

(He had always thought he knew this boy, but could you ever really know anyone?)

Suddenly, he looked like a stranger, and all Jeonghan could feel was an overwhelming wave of sadness, breaking over him, soaking his hair, dripping down his back and his face, sadness that they could never go back to the way they were before, that he had closed the chapter completely on what they had had, that he was growing up and inexorably away from who he had been and that, in the end, they weren’t meant to be, when high school and high school relationships in particular felt like they would never end. In an instant, Jeonghan didn't know this boy he had been with for years.

"Alright," Seungcheol said, and his voice was detached in the worst possible way. "Why?"

"It's not the same anymore," he said. "You must have seen it coming."

"Maybe I did."

(Seungcheol had never been distant with him before. Jeonghan knew, in an abstract sort of way, that the other boy didn't show his feelings to everyone or trust that easily. But he had never _really_ known, because Seungcheol had never been like that with him. From the start, he had been different. He had been the special one. But here it was. Seungcheol didn't show people any emotions he didn't want them to see. He didn't let them know a single jot of information he didn't want known.)

"Seungcheol," Jeonghan said, and he didn't know why he sounded like he was pleading, "this? Us? It's been dead for months. This was going to happen eventually."

"I know."

"Why won't you say anything?"

"What is there to say?"

Jeonghan's heart seized. "Huh?"

"There's no reason to make you stay if you don't want to," Seungcheol shrugged. "I have nothing to say to you."

Jeonghan was at a loss for words.

_So this is how it ends._

"Nothing to say," he echoed. "Okay."

Just as Seungcheol was about to hang up, Jeonghan said, "Wait."

"Hm?"

"I'm sorry."

"For what?"

Jeonghan shrugged. "Everything."

Seungcheol looked at him for so long Jeonghan thought maybe the screen had frozen. "Don't be," he finally said. "Bye, Jeonghan."

"Bye."

* * *

"Is it bad that I'm not sad about it?"

"You seem kind of sad," Joshua replied, brows furrowed. "But if you're not, that's not a bad thing. You feel however you feel, right?"

"I don't think that sad is the right word," Jeonghan said, but despite Joshua's expectant gaze he didn't elaborate.

How did you explain that? How was he supposed to explain that there was no sadness, just a sort of bittersweet melancholy instead, the taste of which seemed to rise up on his tongue when he heard one of their songs on the radio or caught sight of a Polaroid of them that he hadn’t thrown away or made fleeting, accidental eye contact in the halls or smelled his shampoo on someone else’s hair? Was he supposed to try and describe the unique way it pulled on his heart and seemed to physically twist that most vital organ? Was he supposed to tell Joshua how the bottom of his stomach seemed to drop right out whenever he saw Seungcheol and they walked past each other as if they had never known each other?

Because it all sounded like sadness. But it wasn't. Jeonghan was melancholy, but he often was. It was something of a default state for him, one he couldn't escape. He didn't feel nothing about it. He saw Seungcheol and he had an emotional reaction, yeah.

But it wasn't sad. It was an acknowledgement that here was a reminder of something good he'd once had, of some specific yet fleeting happiness he had once enjoyed, that here was a reminder of something he cherished and could no longer touch.

Somehow, it was after the end of whatever could be called 'them' that Jeonghan felt the most free.

How do you explain that? You don't. And he loved Joshua, he did, but the other boy could never quite know what he meant.

"So what is the right word?"

"I don't know that there is one."

* * *

Somehow, they ended up back here again.

Jeonghan stood, one hand clutching a strap of his backpack, at the top of the balcony staircase. There was Seungcheol, with his back towards him. Underneath and behind them, the faint sound of a thousand high school students streaming out towards houses and friends and lives beyond these four walls.

One thousand high school students, minus two. Because Jeonghan was here, and Seungcheol was here, just like before.

"When," Seungcheol said.

"What?" Jeonghan asked, baffled.

"I just want to know when," Seungcheol said, turning around. "When did you realize you didn't love me anymore?"

This was more vulnerability than Jeonghan had thought he'd ever get from Seungcheol again.

"I do love you," Jeonghan protested weakly.

"You know what I mean," Seungcheol sighed.

"I could ask you the same question."

A soft smile from Seungcheol, one Jeonghan hadn't realized he'd missed. "I asked first."

"I can't tell you exactly when," he finally said. "But I knew there was something wrong during one of our lunches up here."

"Of course," Seungcheol said. "Of course you did."

"I don't know what you mean."

"That's okay," and his voice was quiet but then he didn't need to yell for Jeonghan to hear him. He thought maybe Seungcheol would always be the voice he was straining to find. If he was a radio, his default frequency was Seungcheol's.

Or maybe, like Joshua had said, he just didn't know who he was without Seungcheol.

"I could've done a lot worse than you," Jeonghan admitted, stepping towards Seungcheol. He put his backpack down and took a front row seat.

"So could I," Seungcheol said, sitting next to him, and Jeonghan would've sworn on his life that the smile on his ex-boyfriend's face was genuine.

"Do you remember our first kiss? In the lighting booth?" Seungcheol asked.

"Of course. Do you remember that time we were making out on the backstage staircase and we almost got caught?"

"Remember that time we went out to the river and you almost fell in?"

"Remember when I was sad and you bussed all the way downtown just to give me your bubble tea?"

Do you remember do you remember do you remember overlapped and ran together. All the memories – happy, sad, angry, lonely, dark, beautiful – seemed to come to life in front of him and hung in the air like tears in his throat.

They had been good together. They had been really fucking good. And he missed it, missed it with every fibre of his being, but they were over, those times were in the past, and memories were all they had. So it goes. Such was life.

They had been together, and now they weren't.

 _Now all I have is the memory that I was yours and you were mine_ , except maybe they had never belonged to each other in the first place, because that wasn't how it worked. You couldn't own another person, no matter how much you wanted to, and Jeonghan wasn't sure he had ever wanted to.

"I'll always be grateful for you, Seungcheol," Jeonghan said quietly. "We had a good run, didn't we?"

"We did," Seungcheol murmured. "We really did."

"Best damn couple this school has ever seen."

"You can say that again."

"BEST DAMN COUPLE THIS SCHOOL HAS EVER SEEN," Jeonghan yelled, voice echoing inside the cafetorium.

"THE FUCKING BEST," Seungcheol joined in, and for one shining moment they were them again, adolescent and angsty and all the way in love, doing dumb shit together for the sake of it, because idiocy and Seungcheol tasted good in his mouth.

And then the moment was over, and so were they.

**Author's Note:**

> the title for this fic comes from both the novel of the same name and the song "good things fall apart". one of those works is more thematically relevant than the other, haha. this fic was really difficult and i'm still not sure about it but it's a birthday gift so i decided i'd rather post it on time than let it waste away on my hard drive! you can come find me on tumblr at [@colourofinfinity!](http://colourofinfinity.tumblr.com/) and the director's commentary for this fic is at [ this link](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1N6fqvBHlZ1ayToq6ekh7VWoqeYbBrD5BP-Bs1R6YVVE/edit?usp=sharing) if you're interested.
> 
> This story is part of **[the LLF comment project](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject),** whose goal is to improve communication between readers and authors. 
> 
> This author invites:
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * Constructive criticism
> 

> 
> This author replies to comments.


End file.
